168 entries for Historical Context

Matters reached a critical level when, on 6th September 1971, the OPW informed the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the Department of Finance that Marlborough House was on the verge of collapsing: Our Architect has inspected these premises and reports a possibility of imminent collapse of the building, due to dry rot and defective floors. It is imperative that the building be vacated immediately.

On the same day, the Office of Public Works issued another warning letter: ... the building has been inspected today by our Principal Architect who agrees that there is danger of collapse and advises that the premises be evacuated without delay.

A meeting was held four days later, on 10th September 1971, with officials from the Departments of Education and Justice and the Office of Public Works. An architect from the Office of Public Works informed them that: ‘the dangerous part of Marlborough House is the front portion where floors are in danger of giving way. The building might last for years but then again it might come down in a gale’. The decision was taken to immediately seek alternative accommodation for the boys. However, the boys remained there until the closure of the Institution some 11 months later, on 1st August 1972.

A retired High Court Judge, Mr Justice Kingsmill-Moore, visited Marlborough House in October 1971. Initially, the Department of Education were reluctant to allow this, as they thought ‘that no useful purpose would be served by his visit’. They re-considered the matter and gave him permission, but felt that ‘an officer of the Department should accompany him to explain matters. It would not be wise that he should get his explanations from the people now in charge of Marlborough House’. Mr Justice Kingsmill-Moore reported his observations on Marlborough House to the Minister for Education in a letter of 27th October 1971. He said: ... Marlborough House is frankly, appalling. If you could spare ten minutes of your time to visit it, I am sure you would be deeply shocked. For the moment I will only say that owing to the covering of the windows by various materials, including a kind of brown glaze, and quite inadequate electrical lighting, the boys are in an atmosphere of gloom which must be physically and psychologically damaging; that their only seating accommodation is forms, of which there are not enough to provide seats for all the boys; and that there is no form of occupation except watching television in the evening. The general condition of the place can only be appreciated by a personal inspection.

He had also visited the new, unoccupied remand centre at Finglas, which was built in 1970, and praised it and asked the Minister to ‘expedite’ the move from Marlborough House.

He followed up this letter by calling personally to the Department with his wife on 24th November 1971, to explain the situation. He did not let the matter drop and followed with a letter to the Irish Times two months later, on 27th January 1972, which elaborated further the poor conditions. His description was of a desolate, Dickensian house where the boys spent the day in a large hall which was the ‘only living accommodation in the building for “an average of 26 and on occasion up to 36 boys of all ages”, summer and winter’. This room he described as: ... a single enormous hall comparable only to a disused garage. The walls were rough plaster, some falling from damp, exposing the bricks behind. At each end was a small black stove, each with a few red embers at the bottom. The sole furniture consisted of two tables and a few backless forms ... to seat the number of boys incarcerated. Each tall window was blocked by brownish material and covered with wire-netting, a little light coming through part of the upper panes. Hanging from the high ceilings were three or four low-wattage bulbs, one broken.

He went on to point out that the boys had no recreation facilities there. The upstairs comprised a similar room, used as a dormitory, where the ‘blankets were thin and insufficient for winter: again half the windows were blocked’. The only outside facility was a yard which was ‘part rough grass, part earth, where a ball can be kicked about; there is no room for organised football and no equipment for anything else’. In comparison, he found the building at Finglas a ‘triumph of planning, flooded with light and filled with colour ...’.

His fear for the boys in Marlborough House was ‘the possibility of worse injury, physical, mental and moral, in a community so composed, kept in the conditions we saw, without occupation’. The following month, on 21st February 1972, Mr Justice Kingsmill-Moore wrote an article in the Irish Independent decrying the conditions and seeking the transfer of boys to Finglas or, in the alternative, alterations to the physical accommodation.

An RTE television programme, entitled ‘Encounter’ was made with Mr Justice Kingsmill-Moore and his wife about Marlborough House, which had the effect of raising its appalling conditions in the Dail on 1st March 1972, in which Deputy O’Donovan described the Institution as consisting of ‘two rooms, a great barrack of a room underneath and one general dormitory above...there are boys from seven years of age to 17’. Another member of the Dail, Mr Fitzpatrick, said the description of the place by the judge ‘was horrifying. It appears there are two large uncomfortable rooms in which small and big boys are kept. While they were at the house they saw two little boys huddled like little rabbits in a playground’. He added: ‘I am asking the Minister for the good name of the country and in the interests of the unfortunate children to close Marlborough House immediately’. Despite the mounting criticism, it was another six months before Marlborough House was closed down.

There seems to have been no educational purpose to Marlborough House as a detention centre. Neither was there any attempt made to give the children any education while they were there. Although it seems obvious that a child who was sentenced to detention for one month would still need to have some education, that evidently did not happen in Marlborough House. The discovered documents even in the latter stages of the existence of Marlborough House disclose an enormous problem that there was nothing for the children to do. There were no recreational facilities, although there was apparently a television. The children moped around in compete boredom and frustration during the period of their detention in the institution. The Department of Justice certified Marlborough House originally but did not have any function in inspecting it. The Department of Education was in charge of it but did not want it because its functions were related to the courts and the administration of Justice. The age range of boys in Marlborough House was 7 years to 17 years; even in the 1960s there was a boy there aged 8 and a half years. The inmates all lived as one group, unseparated by age or circumstance. The numbers varied, and could go up as high as 38 according to the discovered documents. There was a lot of bullying and assaults by boys on other boys. According to contemporary documents, the staff were untrained and often completely unsuitable for work with children : they were in fact recruited as needed from the local labour exchange. Over 21,000 boys passed through this Institution, and it should have been used as a means of assessment and early intervention to prevent boys entering a lifetime of crime. The Department had neither the vision nor the willingness to effect the necessary changes to make Marlborough House functional. Marlborough House was a chaotic facility, housed in an inappropriate and delapidated building with poor management and inadequate staff. The dispute between the Department of Education and the Department of Justice allowed this situation to go on for years. There is no evidence that the personnel in the Department who had charge of this section had any regard or concern for the boys who were incarcerated in Marlborough House. Changes were recommended in order to avoid scandal and criticism of the Minister and the Department, and not because of the needs of the boys in care. It was logical that Marlborough House should have been the responsibility of the Department of Justice. To insist that because Marlborough House dealt with children only the Department of Education should run it was irrational because in every respect it operated to serve the courts and the administration of Justice. The Department of Justice refused to take it over and denied responsibility, but never the less became a critical commentator on the failures on the Department of Education. The Department of Education’s behaviour in respect of Marlborough House was indefensible. Even accepting all the arguments about administrative jurisdiction, the fact remained that it was a facility that needed to be run well to help the young boys sent there. That meant installing proper management and staff, and carrying out supervision to ensure that whatever plan was put in place was implemented. None of that happened, and the institution was allowed to drift further into neglect, with the Department of Education, and indeed the Department of Justice, doing nothing, not even observing its appalling decline.

The Department of Education in their Statement referred to the procedure in Marlborough House for dealing with complaints of physical abuse, which was outlined in a letter dated 17th May 1971: ... all complaints from parents, guardians or other sources about the treatment of children in Marlborough House are investigated by the Department. The Attendant-in-charge is furnished with a copy of the complaint and his observations are requested. Should the seriousness of the complaint warrant it, an Officer of the Department will also interview the child and the attendant-in-charge and/or the attendant against whom the allegations are made and the Department takes appropriate action where necessary. No complete record of all complaints received is available since many of the complaints received are of a trivial nature.

As will be seen from a discussion of such complaints, this was not in fact the approach taken by the Department.

In 1956, two boys appeared before Judge MacCarthy in the Children’s Court. The two boys, aged 11 and 12, had been remanded in Marlborough House for a week in 1956. It was reported in a number of evening papers that one of the boys during the course of the hearing told the judge: I do not like Marlborough House ... I had to march around a field bigger than the room and, if I tripped over the sticks on the ground they would make me get up and they would start hitting me with a stick.

When questioned by the Justice about the allegations he had made, the boy named two officials. Judge MacCarthy then asked for the two officials to be brought before the court. The garda in charge of the case was reported to have said, ‘I don’t imagine that the punishment was very severe’; to which the Judge responded, ‘You don’t imagine, but you were not there’.

The Judge then turned to the other boy and asked him whether he had got enough to eat in Marlborough House, to which the boy replied ‘Yes, Sir’. He then asked him whether he was punished. The boy replied that he had been punished with a stick for tripping. The officer in charge expressed his surprise that there was any punishment for boys in Marlborough House. The two were remanded on bail for 14 days, and Judge MacCarthy stated that he wanted the Superintendent of Marlborough House to be present at that time.